The future, in its manifest details, is by and large uncertain. We really can't know what to expect. Baseball is projectable. Replacement Level Yankees put up projections for the 2007 line-up a few weeks ago. There are probability charts and scatter plots. That's scientifically verifiable.
Personally, I think like a sabermetrician. I have an extreme adversion to mystical language and vague, ambiguous "prophecies" as "prophecies" go today. I believe movies and novels like Left Behind have probably set the advance of the Kingdom back a few hundred years in how primitive and ridiculous they are.
I don't know what the future holds.
But I do know that yesterday happened to turn out pretty well.
My main concern in Part I was that orthodoxy was eroding. The Economist article said this:
From a classical liberal point of view, this multiplicity of sects is a good thing. Freedom of conscience is an axiom of liberal thought. If man is a theotropic beast, inclined to believe in a hereafter, it is surely better that he chooses his faith, rather than follows the one his government orders.
In the 4th century when the Council of Nicaea met to regulate what was Christian and what was not, the bishops overwhelmingly annihilated the Arian heresy. As I recall, in a gathering of over 300 bishops from Spain to Asia Minor, the number of votes for Arianism did not reach the double digits. The canon was established and uniform. It was what had already been in place. None of the Gnostic texts were seriously considered. God had preserved his Church through a critical moment of history.
The next moments of history will be critical as well. The rate at which the world is changing is accelerating. New issues will continue to sprout up that would not have been prepared for, could not have been imagined. And you know what? I believe it's all going to be OK.
When I use the term "Roman Empire" even I tend to believe of Italians with Roman curls and tunics. In fact, it was as diverse enough to have Spaniard, Greek, Egyptian, Jew, Arab. How could all these people have had the same beliefs without any organization from above? It was the act of a Sovereign God keeping fast his church.
That's what has brought the Kingdom thus far and I believe that's what's going to bring this all home.
There will be no crumbling crown.
By the way, if anyone is curious about where I got the title from, it's actually from an anime I've been watching. The phrasing was really catchy.
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